CV16
Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2007
- Messages
- 445
My dad has a 1980 Mercruiser 228. At some point, somebody added the Pertronix unit to the boat. We've been having problems lately. After reading quite a few posts on here, I ended up finding that I think the unit is bad. With the key to the on position, I only get 3v at the coil, or the resistor. The volts increase when cranking, and sometimes when I quit cranking, it'll read 11v, sometimes 9v. In trying to find out why, I find that if I take the neg wire from the Pertronix off of the neg post on the coil, I get 12v where it should be. All other wires seem to change nothing. If I run a wire from the pos battery post to the pos coil post, it starts and runs great. I took the unit off and tested for resistance from red wire to black, I got nothing. Then I put the red wire on the pos battery post and got 12v from the black wire on the Pertronix. Before I go and spend another $100 to see if this is it, does it sound like the Pertronix unit is bad?